kuan yin

[dancarrigan]

hey now!
ok, after about a year i'm baaaack and i finally got my bus, now named (and possibly for the first time), the kuan yin.
she's an '84 gmc 6000 bluebird 65 passenger that i got in washington state. her seats are now out except for the one with the big heater core
in the stern port side, and the drivers' of course. all seats now de-constructed and the materials already or partially recycled.
i just got a small vermont castings wood stove which i intend on installing. anybody ever run a chimney through the exhaust port in the ceiling
in the back? it seems the right size and everything. i need to anchor it too. out the window seems a bad idea now.
i loved my last diesel, an '82 mercedes 240d, which i put svo in without problems. now i'm psyched for the kuan yin!
dan carrigan
wwww.myspace.com/dancarrigan
http://www.youtube.com/dancarrigan

[arfisher83]

Just wondering - you think venting your woodstove out the window is a bad idea? I thought about running my pipe up through the roof, but decided to go out the side with a couple elbow joints instead. (Wanted to make as little roof penetrations as possible.) I anchored my stove into the floor with eight 5/16" x 2-1/2" lag screws. It seems to be pretty secure. Good choice going with the woodstove! Before I found skoolie.net I thought my stove installation in a bus had to be unheard of, but I guess a lot of people thought of it before I did. It's a great source of heat you can use anywhere- you don't have to have electric hookup and you don't need to keep dangerous fuel tanks with ya.

-Adam

[dancarrigan]

i got the woodstove in and installed very easily, with the help of a strong buddy since
it, a vermont castings Aspen model, requires some good lifting skills. it's very windy around here and i opted in the, um, long run, to remove the top aft vent after a minor inspection from within afforded by removing four philips head screws, and a peek from above courtesy of a fire escape conveniently offered by the adjacent building. crabbing up onto the roof was dicey in the rain but no biggie either.
turns out the over head vent cap is attached to the fan assembly, undone from inside by extracting another half dfozen or so philips headed fasteners. the resulting apperature is only slightly larger than the 6" diameter stove pipe and i had enough elbows and lengths to run it out and down and in too. gaps were filled with aluminum foil and we had a great and warm fire going last night as we ate chili with sharp cheddar and sour cream and had red wine and smoked. wood was my primary heat source in the rockies years ago and i wasn't disappointed with the ambience, and glad i resisted suggestions to get a diesel stove, popular in these parts on boats.
i bought four 1' X ' 1 recycled marble tiles to place below the stove and they barely got warm, eliminating concens about combusting the rubberized floor. i still have to anchor the stove and add a final 4" length of pipe since the cap is cockeyed due to insufficient length, and also seal the top which admits rain through the gap i never bothered to close up since the endeavor was a temporary one. i'm confident that the end is near and facile and i can get to the rest of the bus in warmth and style. the glass on the stove face is even sympathetic to the view from the front, a round arch that mimics the theme of the buses interior.
so there it is: WE HAVE HEAT. after waking up and not seeing my own breath, i ate leftover chili for breakfast, heated on the stove and it was pretty freakin good!

[dancarrigan]

i got the woodstove in and installed very easily, with the help of a strong buddy since
it, a vermont castings Aspen model, requires some good lifting skills. it's very windy around here and i opted in the, um, long run, to remove the top aft vent after a minor inspection from within afforded by removing four philips head screws, and a peek from above courtesy of a fire escape conveniently offered by the adjacent building. crabbing up onto the roof was dicey in the rain but no biggie either.
turns out the over head vent cap is attached to the fan assembly, undone from inside by extracting another half dfozen or so philips headed fasteners. the resulting apperature is only slightly larger than the 6" diameter stove pipe and i had enough elbows and lengths to run it out and down and in too. gaps were filled with aluminum foil and we had a great and warm fire going last night as we ate chili with sharp cheddar and sour cream and had red wine and smoked. wood was my primary heat source in the rockies years ago and i wasn't disappointed with the ambience, and glad i resisted suggestions to get a diesel stove, popular in these parts on boats.
i bought four 1' X ' 1 recycled marble tiles to place below the stove and they barely got warm, eliminating concens about combusting the rubberized floor. i still have to anchor the stove and add a final 4" length of pipe since the cap is cockeyed due to insufficient length, and also seal the top which admits rain through the gap i never bothered to close up since the endeavor was a temporary one. i'm confident that the end is near and facile and i can get to the rest of the bus in warmth and style. the glass on the stove face is even sympathetic to the view from the front, a round arch that mimics the theme of the buses interior.
so there it is: WE HAVE HEAT. after waking up and not seeing my own breath, i ate leftover chili for breakfast, heated on the stove and it was pretty freakin good!

[dancarrigan]

update for the woodstove:
i moved it into the aft starboard corner where it's out of the way of the door and looks good. may be one too many bends in the pipe because
it can get pretty smokey when the wind is up. of course, smoke is good for you.
smoke on the outside of the bus is also pretty profound -especially on the start up- so for guerilla camping, well, it's a bit conspicuous. not that a 65 passenger yellow bus isn't obvious. the stove gets hot enough to cook in a crock pot style and also heat up tea so it seems
worth it, along with the heat factor. the other night it did get foul enough to have to choose between heat and breath ability, after opening and closing
doors and windows a few times. of course anyone who's lived in a real cabin knows it gets smokey with a woodstove...still lovin' it!
photos to follow.